In an oddly ironic twist, today Donald Trump announced that he has picked as chairman of his newly launched fundraising operation none other than a former employee of the bank he has repeatedly criticized in the past, and which he used as a foil to criticize Ted Cruz: Goldman Sachs.

Trump announced that heading up his own personal fundraising operation as national finance chairman will be Steven Mnuchin, a long-time business associate, chairman and CEO of the hedge fund Dune Capital. More importantly, however, he spent 17 years at Goldman Sachs where he was most recently a Partner, having built a fortung of $46 million before launching his own hedge fund.

While employed at Goldman, he purchased the remains of IndyMac Bank (now known as OneWest Bank), the Pasadena, California-based mortgage lender that collapsed in 2008. "Notoriously press-shy, the executive endured 2011 protests on the lawn of his Bel Air mansion by foreclosed homeowners angered at his lender's handling of soured mortgages."

As Zero Hedge readers are familiar, Trump often critized his main competitor Ted Cruz for his links to the bank because of loans used to finance Cruz’s Senate campaign, and because Heidi Cruz was a one-time employee of Goldman. "I know the guys at Goldman Sachs. They have total, total control over him. Just like they have total control over Hillary Clinton,” Trump said in one debate.

He had no qualms, however, in hiring one of the most prominent Goldman alums to raise money for him.

In addition to Goldman, Mnuchin also worked at Soros Fund Management, whose founder, George Soros, has funded many left-leaning causes. Where it gets even more bizarre is that Mnuchin has donated frequently to Democrats, including to Clinton and Barack Obama.

As a hedge fund manager, Mnuchin is part of a group of businesspeople Trump has excoriated. In August, Trump said hedge fund managers were "getting away with murder" as he touted his proposal to end the so-called carried interest loophole, which gives private equity and hedge fund managers preferential tax treatment.

"The hedge fund guys didn't build this country," Trump said at the time on CBS' Face the Nation. "These are guys that shift paper around and they get lucky," he said. "They are energetic. They are very smart. But a lot of them—they are paper-pushers. They make a fortune. They pay no tax. It's ridiculous."

They apparently are also very good at raising money.

Some more on Mnuchin's background: starting his career in the early 1980s as a trainee at Salomon Brothers before moving to Goldman Sachs in 1985, Mnuchin was front and center for the advent of instruments like collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps. He has called securitization “an extremely positive development in terms of being able to finance different parts of the economy and different businesses efficiently.” The pitfalls of the financing method came later, he's said.

Mnuchin's father, Robert Mnuchin, was a partner at Goldman Sachs in the 1960s. The second-youngest of five siblings, Steven attended the prestigious Riverdale Country School and then Yale University, where his roommate was Edward Lampert, who would go on to become a hedge-fund manager and owner of Sears.

More recently, in October 2014 Mnuchin became co-chairman of the board of the Hollywood studio Relativity Media due to Dune's fascination with movies. Dune has provided financing for batches of winning movies, like the “X-Men” franchise and “Avatar,” Hollywood’s all-time box-office champion.

Relativity Media filed for bankruptcy last summer, just a few months after Mnuchin's arrival. According to Variety, Dune was intimately involved in the studio's failure.

The money-man and fellow investors in a Dune Capital fund are said to have lost as much as $80 million — equity that is almost certain to be lost for good, said two sources familiar with the situation. And disgruntled Relativity investors privately are questioning how a bank Mnuchin once headed –OneWest Bank of Pasadena – was allowed by Relativity to drain $50 million from the studio just weeks prior to the July 30 insolvency filing.

Mnuchin had left Relativity just days before the company reached an agreement with OneWest to extend the loan deadline and allow the bank to claim that money.

To be sure, Hillary Clinton, who in turn has been attacked for her paid speeches to Goldman Sachs, also has a high-ranking Goldman official in her ranks, former CFTC commissioner Gary Gensler, who is the former secretary of state’s chief financial officer and whom she is grooming for a potential Treasury Secretary. But for Trump, a self-professed "anti-establishment" candidate, who has repeatedly stated he will fund his own way and is not "for sale to special interest groups", his sudden proximity to Wall Street comes as a big surprise and will leave many of his supporters demanding an explanation.

And he is 7 ft tall.... If the guy can raise money with people that are open to Trumps stances than I am fine with that. If he is selling favors then I am against it. One way or another Hillary will be collecting and already has huge sums of money. So from a business point of view this is the right move to raise cash as long as crony capitalism doesn't go along with it. My guess is this guys contact list for big money donors is quite long.

Come on Gaius. You know where you are posting. You know that most of the readers on here know the score. There is no need to tell most on her Blah! Blah! Blah! You are just wasting space like a newbee.
Seriously, get past this shit of savior or not. We know.

Yeah really. All you lost souls who crave power and vote for power, you are being foolish, brothers. FOOLISH. You might as well root for your OBAMA as you sing for your TRUMP. These vermin deserve not your ADULATION. Your adulation belongs with the Almighty.

The only candidte who was honest about breaking the banks was bernie sanders. he said it openly time and time again. he was fully commited to ending wall street. however american are so blinded by thier h8 to socialisem they will fall again , this time for trump. ive been telling this - trump is a front man to get hillary elected, or he will. they are using both parties.

btw bernie is a jew u need to be one to understand our way of thinking. trump messege was tha aliens are the problams and trade deals, which is far from truth.

Most of us know it makes no difference to the Deep State who is pretending to be president. Clearly the Barons would get to Trump before the convention, if he wasn't already on board, and they would do business. They will make Trump look good to the Sheeple. As noted somewhere here, anyone waiting for or expecting a political savior will be disappointed. Someone even suggested a few days ago a preference for Rand Paul as VP! Rand, Rand... the banker's man. That choice is an obvious "fix". The performance should then go forward with the 'end of the Fed' [they have the government so they no longer need the Fed and can happily throw it under the bus] and a rebranding of the IRS to a flat tax [since we're tapped out] and, along with anti immigration laws, the Sheeple will rejoice. They will believe we are now going in the 'right' direction.

However, the real benefit of Bernie and Trump, if any, is at least moving the Sheeple from total retardation to some level of awakening regarding issues they have not been able to articulate or have been reluctant to challenge. The downside is the reality of the ongoing theater. So-called or perceived "outsiders" like Trump, Rand or Marine Le Pen in France, Nigel Farage et al are simply the newest form of "insider" being sold to the public. Will the Sheeple realize this? I doubt it, yet this is the only way for real change to happen; only if the Sheeple morph into People again can there be any real hope for humanity, much less the U.S. This can only happen if the Sheeple can learn; can educate themselves; seek real information about propaganda and the basics of 'money'. If the Barons get control of the Net, I think we can kiss our collective ass good-bye.

Ok Adanata, but weren't you singing the Trumpo song just a few days ago? I think you were. If you were, you can't convert so easily. First we have to send you to Trumpo reeducation camp, where you can learn, among other things, not to jump on the first horse that rides by. But, I don't know? Maybe it wasn't you? Cheers.

No, I never sang for Trump... what I did say is he is not the "candidate" but the message; i.e. the Sheeple were supporting him because he was not a professional politician and this was a message to the political establishment. I also said I believe Trump hit the political status quo like a comet; I don't think they were expecting him. However, I also said the Barons would get to him; undoubtedly before the convention, if he wasn't already part of the show, and do business with him; make him look good. I noted the Roths were not afraid of Trump or any other individual and they would allow him to be 'elected' if the Sheeple demanded it. The only hedge I made was this; if Trump was on the level, if he meant to actually improve our situation, he would have to come back to the Sheeple again and again and truthfully explain everything; what he was being told to do and by whom. I noted it was pretty gutsy for this billionaire to be riding in his limo and tell the driver to pull over so Trump could get out in the street and stop one guy from beating another with a baseball bat. I allowed for the possibility his intentions were good and every once in a while life throws out a wild card. I also said if he chose Rand Paul as his running mate the fix was absolutely in.